Description: A richly glittering debut about the interlocked fates of two women, raised worlds apart, who must join forces on an extraordinary journey diving leagues beneath the water's surface --and straight into the fathomless heart of fear, forgiveness, and love.
Thirteen years ago, Otta escaped the small town of Steels, intent upon becoming a marine biologist. Now she's returned having failed to achieve her dream, and carrying the guilt of a friend's death during a deep-sea dive. She thinks she may never dive again, but then a stranger appears at her door. This stranger, May, says that her daughter has run away, and insists that she's under a nearby lake -- alive. Because it turns out the small-town legend of "the underlake" is true: three decades ago, an entire valley and the town in it was flooded to make way for a dam, but the people in that town refused to leave.Now, they're still living beneath the lake, self-proclaimed "refugees of a world obsessed with change," connected --and held apart --by an intricate, airtight system of tubes and sealed buildings. To find May's missing daughter, Otta and May must travel deeper and deeper under the water. Along the way, they'll discover communities that have lived in isolation for decades, fomenting extremes of delusion and nostalgia. As the two women bond in the thrall of their search, they are each forced to confront the layers of fear, control, and uncertainty that drive their quest. Together and alone, they must challenge the laws of love and society --and push their bodies to the mortal limit. Hypnotic and arresting, Underlake asks how do we claim our place on the great timeline of history, and who do we erase in the process? It brings a poet's attention to language, gesturing at the evocative and ethereal work of Preeta Samarasan and Marilynne Robinson, while also shrewdly exploring the American obsession with inheritance, property, and race. Finally, Underlake is a powerful meditation on what is possible when women reach through time, space, and memory to relate to one another.
Review Quotes: "Surreal . . . [McCoy's] voice, highly attuned to sensory experience, shines through."
--The New Yorker
--People "Underlake is a novel of gorgeous, pressurized truth. Erin L. McCoy has brought all the layers of love and grief and history to bear, along with an astonishing virtuosity of language. There are images here I know I will never forget as long as I live."
--Clare Beams, author of The Garden "Eerie and mesmerizing, Underlake is a journey into the deepest recesses of American society and the human heart. Erin L. McCoy guides the reader through lightless tunnels and shimmering pools, charting an underwater world of communities living in extreme isolation. At each step, this book illuminates how faith, language, and truth can warp or sharpen under extraordinary pressure. This is a spellbinding exploration of the risks we take for love, reminiscent of the survival story in Women Talking and the labyrinthine mysteries of Piranesi. A breathtaking and unforgettable debut about what happens when the water rises and when the water runs out."
--Susanna Kwan, author of Awake in the Floating City
"In this stunning debut, Erin L. McCoy has found another world beneath our own, where attempts to create a purer society inculcate the worst tendencies of what its inhabitants have disavowed. At times surreal but--from the beginning to its sublime last line--also achingly true to the human need for hope and forgiveness, Underlake reveals that the greatest depths are within the human heart."
--Ron Rash, author of The Caretaker
"[Underlake is] beautifully written -- Erin is a poet, and there is clenched music in every line -- and constructs not just a story but a new, murky world."
--Tom Junod, author of In the Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man "In the vein of Margaret Atwood and Emily St. John Mandel, McCoy's novel is a thoughtful, ethereal story that sometimes feels as though it came from the eerie depths it describes. With flowing prose and an unflinching style, McCoy takes on the mystical ideas of the book as well as the harsh realities behind them, and the reader is given a gorgeously written novel on the power of religious fanaticism, familial love, and the responsibilities we carry in the face of tragedies we cannot control."
--Booklist (starred review) "Ambitious . . . [with] a compelling cast of characters . . . [Underlake is] worth the attention of serious fiction readers."
--Kirkus Reviews "Vivid . . . [A] magical mystery tour . . . McCoy effectively conveys how May and Otta are bonded by their mutual damage."
--Publishers Weekly